Pat
Jedi Master
Thanks Pierre. This is December 2022 news.
November 2021, King Charles opens new astrazeneca facilities...
Just consolidation of interests IMO!
Thanks Pierre. This is December 2022 news.
INCREDIBLE TURNOVER of the famous Wall Street Journal which is now ready to tackle the censorship surrounding the Covid-19 by governments, social media and the media.
I tend to agree...and especially as the end of the article pushes AI as being the saviour of data crunching!!Not sure I share your optimism, PERLOU. To me that comes across more like a limited hangout, to somewhat placate the unruly - before they let the next shitshow loose on the populace.
But maybe I am the perpetual pessimist …
Through the miserable years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Bob Wachter, the University of California-San Francisco medical department chair, became a beacon of guidance to hundreds of thousands who followed his social media tips on avoiding the virus that killed more than 1.1 million Americans.
Though he works in a hospital that treated COVID patients, Wachter managed to avoid the respiratory disease through a regimen of crowd avoidance, medical-grade mask-wearing, vaccination and boosting — as well as a little luck.
But this week, he told his 274,000 Twitter followers: “my luck ran out.”
“My case is a cautionary tale, particularly for the ‘just a cold’ folks,” Wachter tweeted in a long thread about his ordeal Wednesday evening. “Mine definitely was not… I literally have scars to show for it.”
Few today pay much mind to the virus that upended life around the world from 2020 through 2022. But Wachter noted the virus is still out there and still poses a threat, though not as great as it did before mutating into less virulent variants and before widespread population immunity from vaccines and prior infection led to declining deaths and an end to public health emergencies.
Now that the federal and state public health emergencies are over, COVID cases are no longer being tracked, but people hospitalized with COVID reached an all-time low in California in recent weeks. There have been fewer than 1,000 COVID patients in the state’s hospitals since early June. Since an all-pandemic low of 611 hospitalized patients on July 2, it has risen to slightly over 800 by July 8. Federal authorities are planning an updated COVID-19 vaccine booster for the fall.
Wachter said he received his second “bivalent” vaccine booster tailored to protect against the more recent omicron variants in April, but he noted that the two-to-three month “window of protection” it offers “had passed.” He also acknowledged he “let down my guard a bit,” — he still wears an KN-95 mask on planes and in crowded rooms, but dines indoors without.
This week, Wachter said he was on clinical duty at UCSF hospitals where medical staff still are required to wear masks in patient areas.
He said he “felt fine until Sunday afternoon when, after leaving the hospital, I noticed a dry cough.”
“By Sunday night, I felt flu-ish, with a sore throat, fever, and chills,” Wachter tweeted. “Things got bad overnight. Monday, I woke up drenched in sweat, with a bad sore throat and a hacking cough.”
He took a home test for the COVID virus, which was negative, but he wasn’t convinced he didn’t have it and planned to take another. He called in sick to work, didn’t eat or drink, and “choked down 2 Tylenols.”
“Then I made a mistake — I took a shower,” Wachter wrote. “While the instinct to take a shower when you’re sweaty and gross is understandable, stepping into hot water when you’re dehydrated and flu-ish can cause your blood vessels to dilate, leading to a dangerous drop in blood pressure. And that’s what happened.”
Wachter wrote that he woke up “in a bloody pool on my bathroom floor.”
“There was a dent in the lid of a trashcan, likely where my head had hit,’ he wrote. “I remembered nothing. As I managed to get up, it was clear that my face was going to need stitches, and more than a couple.”
Wachter said he needed an overnight hospital stay, anti-seizure medication, stitches on his forehead and a neck collar for a small cervical fracture, and posted a photo of himself afterward, sporting a black eye as well.
“So my first case of COVID was pretty dramatic,” Wachter concluded. “If I hadn’t passed out, it would have been 3-4 days of a pretty nasty upper respiratory illness. But I did, and so my (unusual) case goes on my list of reasons that COVID continues to be worth avoiding if you can.”
Wachter said he has no idea where he contracted the virus — he hasn’t had any COVID patients lately — “so it’s likely to remain a mystery.” And although he has “joined the 3/4 of Americans who aren’t NoVids,” he said ” I don’t think it’ll change my behavior.” As long as the case rates remain low as they are now, he said he’ll “continue being relatively careful, but no more than I’ve been.”
But he added that “I will, however, be more careful about showering or taking a hot bath or hot tub when dehydrated. That’s one important takeaway from this mess.”
Wachter said Thursday by email that “I’m healing (slowly).”
Well if this middle-aged white boy was never suspended they'd be $250k less in the red! I got another naughty letter the other day but I couldn't be bothered replying. However I did write to the new girl asking for my brothers and sister firefighters to be reinstated. Looking at her profile I don't think it'll be happening, she's perfect, all she needs are the pronouns and purple or pink hair!Mr Baxter's arrival in 2017 marked the beginning of Fire and Rescue NSW's Plus Plan - a five-year strategy to transform into a world-leading emergency service.
One of its stated aims was to increase the diversity of the fire service, historically overwhelmingly dominated by white men.
They paid you $250,000?Well if this middle-aged white boy was never suspended they'd be $250k less in the red!
No, I was an on call firefighter. To cover the gap left by my suspension they had to put permanent firefighters on at $150 per hour each for up to 12 hours almost daily. I cost about $20k a year.They paid you $250,000?